Éliton M Moura, "Technological Innovation in Public Education: the Maker Movement and the Program Free Fablab of São Paulo"
Discussant: Visiting Scholar Jose Valente as the discussant.
The objective of this research is to analyze the teachers' formative process in the Fab Lab Livre SP project, under the influence of the Maker Movement, with a view to the production of physical and digital contents. It is considered that this production process influences the scientific-technological appropriations of the participants of this project, opening possibilities for transformations and overcoming of established realities. The purpose of the proposal is to contribute with elements on the author's development and the formative process of public education teachers. The main methodological procedures are: bibliographic surveys on the use of new digital technologies in education, mainly on the Maker Movement in education, and a field research in the Fab Lab Livre SP project, using several instruments for obtaining information, such as field notes, photographs, filming, documents and databases produced physically and digitally, in addition to questionnaires and interviews. The main hypothesis is that the existing technological experience in the Maker Movement enables the formation and constitution of teachers who, in addition to being connected to the technological advance, become stimulating agents for author production. We assume that education is committed to transform realities, empower individuals, improve and create spaces that socially and culturally value subjects so that they can question the world and make changes, challenge their reality and create solutions. The research has as main theoretical references the works of Paulo Blikstein, Mitchel Resnick, Seymour Papert, Paulo Freire and Inés Dussel.
Priscilla Bacalhau, "Done with High School. What’s next?: Educational and Professional Choices for the Youth"
Discussant: Professor Eric Bettinger
In this project, I gather the administrative data of a corporate volunteer program in Brazil in order to evaluate its results and determine the impact of providing information about returns to education and post high school options for the students. The hypothesis is that students in low SES public high schools do not have access to either information about the positive returns to education or information about how to access Higher Education. Through the corporate volunteer program, the volunteers visit public high schools, in an evening class, to provide information to the students, seeking to motivate them to complete this level of education and to present possibilities for post high school options. Using data from a survey carried out with students in the intervention, I present evidence that the intention to attend college is not totally associated with the intention to apply for the national high school exam (Enem), which is used in the college selection process. This difference may indicate the existence of a gap between the interests of young people and the information available to them on how to pursue their academic goals. However, estimation of the intervention effect at the school level, using various comparison groups and methods of differences in differences and fixed effects, did not present significant results on the dropout rate and participation in the Enem for schools that received the volunteers.
